Conference Goal and Objectives
Since the first conference was held in New York City in 1998, the goal of improving health care for culturally diverse populations has moved from the margins to the mainstream of health care. In recognition of the tenth anniversary of the conference series, the goal of the Sixth National Conference on Health Care for Culturally Diverse Populations is to assess the progress made in both practice and policy, and to chart a course for the future that builds on the field’s strengths of grassroots and national-level innovation, collaboration, and information sharing.
The 2008 conference will start with a historical look at the people, policies and influential forces that helped bring attention to the health care needs of culturally diverse populations. This will be complemented by a discussion of trends affecting future work in this area, including health care politics, financing, and scientific advancements, as well as the global political and environmental forces that impact migration.
The conference will focus on three main objectives:
- Addressing the needs and concerns that affect day-to-day practice at the clinical, organizational and community level. For those working at the front lines of the field, this includes those issues that affect job performance, management, quality of service delivery, and overall acceptance of cultural competence/disparity reduction interventions.
- Continuing the integration of cultural competence/disparity reduction into mainstream healthcare priorities. These include improving access to services and insurance, embedding cultural competence/disparity reduction within all aspects of the quality improvement agenda, long-term financing concerns, pay-for-performance, and health care and information technology advances.
- Developing a vision for advancing the field. What work is needed to refine, consolidate, and advance the field and its practice areas? What are the key needs of the field in practice, policy, and research? What standardization is necessary, and where are new approaches and practices required?
Highlighting local and international models
We are very fortunate to have the conference hosted by the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, which is well known for its historical commitment and a broadly collaborative approach to culturally competent health care access. Beyond the Twin Cities and throughout the Midwest are many rural communities and communities where assimilating immigrants is a relatively new phenomenon or complicated by distance and lack of professional resources. By working closely with local stakeholders and regional advisors, we intend to feature this experience and expertise through conference workshops and cultural activities.
In setting the stage for discussing the future of this field, we are also inviting international experts to help us understand the impact of global migration patterns. We will also convene one or more international panels with participants who can address how cultural diversity in health care is handled in the health care systems of different countries.
Strengthening participation and collaboration
Over the years, we have worked to develop conference participation formats that are increasingly interactive and collaborative. In addition to preconference training sessions and main conference workshops, the 2006 conference program featured 17 peer-to-peer practice sessions and roundtable discussions, along with an extremely well-received theatrical presentation on bilingual interpretation that incorporated audience participation.
We recognize that the real power in this field stems from the generous and collaborative nature of the people working in it. At conference workshops, in the hallways, on listservs between meetings, and in local and regional exchanges, people are drawn to share information, resources, challenges, and successes. The natural next step is to formalize these connections on a national level by using the conference to strengthen collaborative relationships and to build “communities of practice” that can provide opportunities for dialogue, learning and support between conferences.
We propose to take our commitment to genuine participation to a new level by mixing information-sharing, dialogue, and partnership-building. We will explore using the following approaches:
- Inviting conference participants and others to offer their views on the three main conference objectives prior to convening in Minneapolis through online surveys and discussion boards. The responses will be summarized and made available at the conference.
- At the conference, addressing one or more key questions through facilitated dialogues according to areas of practice: language access, clinical cultural competence and disparity reduction, organizational cultural competence, and research and policy. Conference participants will self-select by area of practice, and participate in a breakout session to tackle the questions as a group using a variety of dialogue approaches.
- Major themes and recommendations will be delivered back to a closing plenary session (and potentially be developed as published agendas for future work).
- The dialogue sessions will also have the important function of building the foundation for communities of practice that would continue to function after the conference.